Very confusing U.S. sales begin for the Motorola Moto E5 Play and E5 Plus

The Motorola Moto E5 Plus and Moto E5 Play are now available to buy in the U.S.

The vanilla Moto E5 however, is not.

Pricing and naming for the two available devices are erratic across carriers.

Earlier this month, we posted an article detailing the pricing and country launches of several Motorola devices. The information presented was confusing, to say the least. Certain phones are only launching in certain countries, and many of the price points were in foreign currency or not available.

Today, we have some additionally confusing U.S. pricing on the Motorola Moto E5 Play and Moto E5 Plus, via GSM Arena. However, don’t go looking for the vanilla Moto E5 because it (also confusingly) is not launching in the United States.

Let’s start with the Moto E5 Play. You can get the Moto E5 Play from Verizon, Cricket, and Boost Mobile. Each carrier sells the device for different prices: Verizon for $95, Cricket for $100, and Boost Mobile for $80.

To add some more confusion to the mix, the Cricket variant of the Moto E5 Play is actually called the Motorola Moto E5 Cruise.

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The Motorola Moto E5 Plus, however, is only available through Sprint at the moment, and it will cost you $288. You might be wondering why the Plus variant is nearly three times as expensive as the Play variant. Well, we’re wondering that as well. In our article summing up the Motorola device launches, the Moto E5 Plus was listed as costing 169 euros (~$196). Why is it nearly $100 more expensive in the U.S. than what Europeans will pay for the device? We’re not sure.

Motorola might want to reconsider its launching and pricing strategies for these devices. The confusion between names, launch countries, and prices are not making the phones an easy sell. I suppose Motorola is only banking on budget-conscious customers to buy a Moto E5 device at a carrier when signing up for a new line? Seems like a weird strategy.